Wife or Death

by Ellery Queen

  WIFE OR DEATH

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Jim Denton—he couldn't keep track of his wife's adulteries, but he finally arranged for Angel's lovers to lay her away

  Corinne Guest—the perfect wife and the past imperfect widow

  The "Billiard Twins"—Ellen Wright and Olive Haber. Their deadly cue shots caromed all over town

  Ralph Crosby—the truculent D.A, who had lost

  the wife but was out to get the husband

  Angel Denton—a voluptuous mid-century child-woman; she had the name but lost the game

  George Guest—it took Jim, his best friend, to discover who sped the parting guest

  Norm Wyatt—this genial sportsman married into blood money

  Ardis Wyatt—a handsome, imperious woman with the soignée of a lifetime of luxury, but murder cracked her veneer wide open

  Gerald Trevor—multimillionaire movie mogul whose courtliness landed him in trouble

  Arnold Long—one of the long line of Angel's short-lived lovers

  Matthew Fallon—this red-haired cartoonist was one of the Legions of Angel's Lovers Bridget White—a cleaning woman whose avarice blew the lid off the box Chief August Spile—this shrewd, able lawman moved slowly, unless there was a gun at his back

  Tim MacPherson—the only thing this taciturn taxi driver was beaten by was the weather

  1

  At midnight, when the masks came off, Jim Denton had not yet been on the dance floor. He had spent the whole hour since their arrival at the downstairs bar, waiting for his wife to return from her alleged visit to the powder room.

  Angel's affection for the country club powder room was an old story by now. Denton thought: That's her escape hatch. What's mine?

  Corinne Guest, sequinned mask dangling, slipped onto the neighboring stool. She was dressed as Peter Pan, which suited her perky figure and features perfectly. Denton gave her an admiring look and she smiled acknowledgment. Her glance ran over his lanky frame, from leather hip boots to plumed hat, with amused approval.

  "Hi, d'Artagnan."

  "I'm Athos."

  "How does a lady tell the difference?"

  Denton said with a shrug, "The abandoned husband."

  He regretted the remark at once. He had intended it as a jeering reference to being left waiting at the bar, but from Corinne Guest's vanishing smile she thought he had been referring to Angel's extra-marital activities. It was the worst-kept secret in town.

  "She said fifteen minutes," he explained, and wondered why he went through the motions. "But you know Angel. No sense of time at all."

  "Oh," Corinne said, and smiled again. "Well, we're in the same boat. I seem to have lost George in the excitement, too."

  Tradition had it at the club's Hallowe'en balls that you kissed your partner when the masks were lifted at midnight, but you were supposed to make a point of being with your better or worse half as the witching hour struck. All around them married couples and sweethearts were wrapped around each other.

  Denton grinned. "I won't presume to predict about George, but it's as sure as death and taxes that my Angel is bussing somebody right this second. Are you and I going to just sit here?"

  "And you an editor," Corinne said. "You split an infinitive."

  "And you a female. You changed the subject."

  She laughed. "All right, Monsieur Athos. Let's pay lip service to tradition."

  Leaning over, she placed a palm on each of his cheeks and touched her lips to his. Immediately she straightened back on her stool.

  Denton growled, "I've had more passionate kisses from the ghost of my great-great-grandmother."

  "Oh, but it's so public to show my true feelings," Corinne said lightly. "Your reporter is sitting over there at the corner table. I'd hate to show up in the Clarion's gossip column."

  It was young Ted Winchester, with a girl. Neither was in costume. Ted waved at him.

  "I can always edit out anything personal in his copy," Denton said, waving back. "Want to try again?"

  "Frankly, I'd rather have a drink."

  "Why do the women in my life always prefer drinking with me to necking?"

  "Maybe because they're not the women in your life."

  "You mean they're the women in somebody else's life?"

  "Something like that," Corinne Guest said.

  'That's what I like about you," Denton complained. "You're so suggestible. Jiggers?"

  The bartender came over at Denton's signal, and Denton said. "One bourbon and soda for Mrs. Guest."

  "Nothing for you, Mr. Denton?" Denton's glass was empty.

  "The night is young, pal."

  The bartender grinned and prepared a bourbon and soda for Corinne. She took one aseptic sip and set it down. Denton signed the tab.

  "Aren't you drinking tonight, Jim?"

  "I've been drinking."

  "I mean drinking."

  "Aren't you? One sip doth not a hangover make."

  "Me? This is not my first one. Mr. Denton." Just the same, she raised her glass and took a healthy swallow. And choked over it, at which Denton ungallantly chuckled. "Seriously, Jim, if you're not drinking you don't have to sit here with me. George will get here eventually. Have you danced?"

  "Not yet."

  "Oh. I'm so sorry."

  He found himself rather annoyed at her tone, and the discovery surprised him. Jim Denton and Corinne and George Guest had been close friends all their lives. Why, he thought, should Corinne's sympathy over his wife's antics irritate him7 It wasn't as if he were still in love with Angel, or gave a damn whether she laid every man in town.

  He shook his head, managed a grin. "How about you dancing with me, dream of my youth?"

  "And lose my seat at the bar? No, thank you! They'll be thundering down here from the dance floor any second now."

  This was transparent. Corinne was strictly a social imbiber, and here she was, talking like one of the club's lushes. It was just an excuse to get him off the hook. In her intuitive way Corinne had apparently sensed his annoyance.

  "Go find your wife and dance with her," Corinne smiled. So she knew he could no longer keep from looking for Angel. "She deserves to suffer for deserting you."

  "Suffer? Am I that bad?"

  "You'll do till George comes along. You two are the worst dancers in town." As he slid from his stool Corinne added, "Oh, and if you see that husband of mine, steer him this-a-way."

  Denton smiled back and drifted off.

  The bar was beginning to fill up now, as Corinne had predicted; he had to shoulder his way up the staircase through a thickening crowd.

  Upstairs, as he surveyed the flashing motley on the dance floor, Denton clanked his sword against his knee and felt less ridiculous in his musketeer's costume. Everyone in Ridgemore seemed to be attending this Hallowe'en Ball—at least, everyone in the country club set—and only a few of the older members had come in ordinary evening togs. In addition to the tried-and-true ghosts, goblins, witches and wizards, there were clowns, hoboes, moonmen, cowboys, two knights armored in aluminum-painted cardboard, several harem girls, at least three Madame du Barrys, a George Washington with a Martha on his arm, an Abe Lincoln (on obvious elevator shoes)—even one overweight Tarzan in a leopard skin that left most of his hairy chest and back bare.

  Denton watched the dancers for several minutes without spotting his wife's costume—or, rather, lack of one. Angel had come, of course, as Cleopatra. What could be more appropriate? Angel loved these affairs; they gave her a socially acceptable excuse for putting her luscious anatomy on exhibit before the men. She was as close to naked as the law allowed.

  Once it had caused him anguish. No more.

  He had not really expected to find her on the dance floor—not after a whole hou
r's disappearance. It was only a technical possibility that he had to eliminate. So now he knew that again she was in the dark somewhere, probably outdoors, her wrap over her near nudity, with some Ridgemore buck enthusiastically playing Antony to her royal Egyptian whore. Denton had reached the point where he no longer even wanted to salvage his marriage. He was merely drifting along until she committed some act so flagrant that he could not ignore it. The only thing that angered him was the occasional poor-old-Jim glance he caught friends throwing his way when they saw him alone, peering over a crowd.

  Abruptly he went out into the lobby again and back downstairs to the bar. The scabbard banging his shins made him elevate it at a high angle behind him. It struck him that in this position the sword gave him a tail. He thought with amusement that he was now complete—he had had the horns for a long time.

  The barroom by now was packed and deafening. Corinne Guest still sat where he had left her. She gave him the raised eyebrows.

  "I forgot to look for him," Denton confessed, belatedly remembering her request. "Although I don't think he's on the dance floor."

  "Oh, well," Corinne said. "Sooner or later George will zero in on the bar. Couldn't you find Angel, either?"

  "I only took a duty look. If I don't go hunting for her she complains of neglect. If I find her she says I step on her feet. So I stand in the archway to the ballroom, where she can spot me looking around for her if she happens to be dancing. I don't look very hard, but it saves trouble."

  "Just like a man." Corinne swung around on the stool so that her back was to the bar. "I think you're in a mood to weep on a sisterly shoulder. Order us a couple of drinks, Jim, and we'll find us a secluded nook and go into therapy."

  The worst of it was that she meant well. Corinne didn't have a scandalmongering bone in her body.

  As a delaying tactic Denton said, "Here?" and wrinkled his nose.

  "I know a place. Come on, Jim. You need it."

  He was trapped. "Say, Jiggers," he called to the bartender. "Bourbon and soda twice."

  Corinne led the way, Denton following with the two glasses. Out in the hall, she walked past the staircase and headed for the slatted door at the end labeled Men's Locker Room. She opened the door, groped along the wall and turned on the lights.

  It was a long narrow room with rows of green lockers and wooden benches between the rows. Corinne seated herself on a bench. Denton handed her one of the glasses, sat down beside her and adjusted his sword to rest on his lap.

  "You seem awfully familiar with the men's locker room," he grinned. "Do you often rendezvous here?"

  She grinned back. "Don't you remember the night of the high school senior prom?"

  "Egads!" Denton said. "Trust a woman to dredge up a thing like that! I was only seventeen, and you were a fifteen-year-old brat with orthodontic braces."

  "They didn't prevent you from trying to buss me," Corinne said tartly.

  "Trying?" he said with a leer. "As I recall it, we had ourselves quite a necking session."

  "Trust a man to remember that." She took a sip of her drink, smiling. "You know, Jim, I was so wide-eyed in those days I thought our fumbling little smooch-party meant we were engaged. It was a real blow when I saw you at the next dance with that horrible Sally Means."

  "I didn't have sense enough to know what I wanted back then, Corinne. By the time I achieved wisdom, you'd married George."

  "Whoa, boy, down!" she said. "This is just a conversation between old friends."

  "That's right." He grinned again. "In the men's locker room, which was your idea. Anyway, what makes you think I regard you as anything but an old friend?"

  She colored and took another quick sip. "Touched old friend. Shall we start over?"

  Denton set his own drink down on the bench between them. "All right, Corinne. What the devil are we doing here?"

  "I told you. I thought it might make you feel better to talk about it."

  "Talk about what?"

  "Oh, don't be dense! About the nasty gossip, Jim. You know I'm not the prying type, but if there's anything I can do—"

  "There isn't," he said shortly.

  Corinne looked stricken. "That'll teach me to mind my own business." She rose from the bench.

  He pulled her back down. "I guess I'm touchier on the subject than I realized, Corinne. Thanks for the try. But unloading my troubles on you isn't going to solve anything. I've about reached the point in this thing where the only one I want to confide in is a lawyer."

  "I'm sorry to hear that, Jim."

  Why was she sorry? Corinne, like everyone else in town, must know that Angel was a full-time tramp, about as moral as Don Marquis's Mehitabel.

  Undoubtedly it was his own fault. He had known Angel was a tramp when he met her, and it had been romantic idiocy to think marriage would change her. To bring a big-city alley cat into a small town and expect to make a respectable tabby out of her! He must have had rocks in his head.

  "What?" Denton said.

  "I said I'm sorry I poked my big nose into your private life."

  "Big nose! It's the cutest little nose in town."

  This time her smile was different. "We're still friends, Jim?"

  He raised his glass. "Two of the Three Musketeers."

  The slatted hall door was suddenly opened and Julian Overton, the club secretary, peered in at them. He looked first surprised, then coy.

  "Excuse me, folks," the fat man said. "I saw the light through the slats and thought somebody'd forgotten to turn it off. Don't let me interrupt whatever's going on." And winking at Denton, he backed off and let the door swing to again.

  "Oh, great," Corinne said in an annoyed voice. "We would have to be caught by dear dirty-minded Mother Overton. By the time the dance is over, it'll be all over the club that you had half my clothes off. Let's get out of here, Jim."

  2

  The barroom was so crowded now that they had to finish their drinks standing just inside the doorway. Denton tried to work his way through for refills, but he gave up. Corinne was on tiptoes, craning and peering.

  "It's a lost cause for both of us," he advised her. "I'm not thin enough, and you're too short."

  "Can you see George? He's dressed as Captain Hook."

  He would be, Denton thought. It was symbolic of the Guests' relationship that George should choose a harmonizing costume. Peter Pan and Captain Hook belonged together. As Cleopatra and Athos did not.

  From his height of six-one Denton could see everyone in the mob. He spotted two pirates, but neither was George. And Angel was still among the missing.

  He turned to report to Corinne when a voice behind them said in a shrill whisper, "Oh, look, Olive! Ralph Crosby drowning his sorrows! There, at the far end of the bar."

  Denton glanced over his shoulder. The whisperer was stout, porker-snouted Ellen Wright; she was dressed as a female clown. Her whisper had been directed to a skinny witch, whom Denton recognized as Olive Haber, a floor nurse at the county hospital.

  Wondering why the county district attorney should be "drowning his sorrows," Denton looked toward the far end of the bar. Ralph Crosby's fleshy face was purple; his usually well-combed, Indian-black hair was tumbled all over his head; he was sweating like the farmer he was costumed to be. He wore overalls and a red bandana, and he carried a pitchfork.

  Skinny Olive Haber said in a vibrant sotto voce, "Did you see her breeze right past him with a cool hello, Ellen? I thought I'd die at his expression!"

  The piggish female clown nodded eagerly. "I wonder who the new man is. I don't suppose you've heard, Olive?"

  "No. I saw her dancing with three different ones. Who she finally disappeared with I don't know."

  Gossiping bitches! Denton thought in disgust. He turned to Corinne again, but when he saw her face the subject of the pair's whispers suddenly became clear to him.

  So District Attorney Ralph Crosby had been his wife's latest bed-partner, he thought with bitter amusement. Apparently he was a little out of d
ate; he had been under the impression that she was still sleeping with young Arnold Long. With the rapid turnover, it was not surprising that he was not always able to keep abreast of Angel's adulteries. Husbands were usually the last to hear such news, anyway.

  He wondered idly who the district attorney's successor was.

  Ellen Wright began to whisper something else. Corinne said quickly, drowning it out: "I think, Jim, I'll accept that invitation to dance now."

  Corinne kept chattering as they climbed through the jam. She chattered about everything but the subject of the clown-witch whispers, to Denton's relief.

  The dance crowd upstairs had thinned down to about half a dozen indefatigable couples. Perhaps half a dozen more were sitting around, watching the dancers in the usual almost-ready-to-go-home trance. One of the seated couples was Angel Denton and George Guest.

  Corinne hesitated for the tiniest moment. But then she was steering Denton toward the pair, saying "Hello!" in a bright voice, and slipping into the chair beside her husband.

  Angel looked up with one of her most enchanting smiles. "Hi," she said in her unexpectedly husky voice. "We've been wondering where you two were."

  The husky quality was surprising because, from her appearance, she should have sounded little-girlish and pouty. Like Brigitte Bardot, Angel was one of the rare mid-century breed of women whose bodies were all sex and whose faces were all child. The huge innocent uncomplicated primer-blue eyes, the sulky little red mouth with pushed-out lips, always slightly parted, the small perfect nose, the ceramic complexion, the tumbled pile of blonde hair—these were set on a body mature, voluptuous, lazily flaunted. The combination was irresistible to men, as Denton knew only too well from his own experience with her. It was no accident, Denton had often thought, that Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita fascinated men and enraged women. The child-woman image touched taboos deeply buried in Western man; and when an Angel came along, with her open-mouthed availability, hell was bound to break loose.

  Tonight she had really gone all out, Denton mused as he looked down at her; it was a wonder the other women hadn't got her behind a tree somewhere on the golf course and clawed her to ribbons. She had used the Cleopatra masquerade as an excuse for exposing the goodies conventional dress could merely hint at. The only thing remotely Egyptian about her get-up was the headdress, a towering affair distinguished principally by blue cowhorns—which he should be wearing, Denton thought wryly, and which had been worn in ancient Egypt a millennium or more before the Nile siren's reign. Angel had copied it from a magazine photo of a detail from an Egyptian tomb. For the rest, she had draped a sheer black nylon scarf diagonally over her shoulders and across her breasts, knotted at the back ("That's about as Egyptian as a bikini bra," he had told her mildly at home, and she had said with an innocent stare, "Oh my gosh! Well, darling, it's too late now," and blithely continued dressing); she had put on the sheerest of black briefs, evading the law against indecent exposure by the cunning arrangement of sequins sewn on it, and over the briefs a sheer flared skirt barely longer than what it purported to cover; her legs were bare; her feet were in hooked-up sandals; and she had stuck a rhinestone button in her navel. Her large firm breasts were mistily discernible under the scarf, two mounds of milky whiteness; even the color of her nipples could be seen. ("Aren't you afraid you'll be arrested?" Denton had asked her, and she had looked sincerely puzzled: "But darling, it's a private affair, at the club," as if that made it all right.)